That’s what fixed the rest of what was left of my toxic worldview. I started working in healthcare. I’ve treated people from all over the world. I’ve treated people who speak so many different languages. I’ve treated people of all religions. I’ve treated different gender identities and sexual preferences. I’ve treated people I knew were rapists or murderers (fucking worst, but you grit your teeth and treat them like human beings who need healthcare). I’ve treated so many refugees from various places (love the refugees, keep them in the US!)

All of them are just people. I’ve met a lot of really shitty people and a lot of really good people. It’s hard to hate a group of people when you meet individuals from a particular subset and realize they have the same hopes and fears as you. At the end of the day, we all just want to go to our respective homes and be safe and loved and alive and there shouldn’t be anything political about that.

Talking to him and being a good person can do more than you realize.

I was raised white Christian nationalist, although we didn’t call it that and I wouldn’t have realized that’s what I was. I was taught all the conservative bullshit, both politically and socially. Thankfully there was always a part of me that was like “something isn’t right here” and I kept my mouth shut and was never the bully going around mouthing off to gay kids or minorities, but I definitely thought things like “being gay is a choice” and “poor people should just work harder” and “abortion is something welfare queens do” but also “welfare queens have lots of babies for more money”.

Being around people like you who were nonjudgmental and just talked about their point of view and occasionally gently challenged my beliefs without being confrontational opened my worldview and helped give me the courage to listen to the voice in my head that was saying something felt wrong with the belief system I was raised in. I’d always been taught things like liberals were stupid and lacked critical thinking skills and acted solely on emotions and I was young and kept in a bubble and was dumb enough to believe it until I started meeting people who proved otherwise. That was enough to start the cracks forming that eventually shattered the entire wall of lies. I’m now a raging socialist and I don’t care how people live their lives as long as they aren’t harming anyone else. I don’t think I would have ended up that way if I wasn’t someone who is willing to think for myself and who isn’t afraid to be the “black sheep”, because leaving that mindset lost me my family, but I definitely wouldn’t have ever been able to start down the path I’m on if I was never exposed to people like you who started showing me the lies in the first place.

They just announced that they’re raising water and sewage in my area by 300% by the end of the year. No reason given, just because they can. It should be fucking illegal. They’re also planning on putting in a few data centers, which are currently being hotly contested, because they’re supposed to make everyone’s electric bill go up about 300% as well. I’m terrified as to how I’m going to afford my electric bill. Water and sewage is included in my rent, I can’t wait to see how much that increases when my lease is up this winter and I also have no idea how I’ll afford it, but I also don’t know if I could find anywhere to move that would be cheaper and not give me a commute that negates any savings.

This. I use FOSS apps for as much as possible, have all my privacy settings carefully curated, don’t use Gmail or other Google apps for anything that matters, and have everything related to AI, social media apps, or services I don’t use disabled in the system apps, plus I use Mullvad’s DNS server to block ads and social media traffic from my phone itself, not just browsers. I work a lot of hours and don’t get much time to just chill. While I’m more tech savvy than the average person I’m far less tech savvy than the average Lemmy user. I don’t want to spend what little free time I have trying to install a different OS on my phone hoping I don’t brick it, or figuring out if I can get things to work with my phone carrier, my work apps, or my banking apps, and the convenience of having those apps outweighs the cons.

Oh they “rigged” it, but they did it very openly. Elon Musk went to all the key states and bribed voters with his checks and his lottery and it was all ruled completely legal because technically anyone could sign up even though it was very obviously set up to pay off people to vote for Trump.

Once the immigrants are out they’ll just start onto the next group they don’t like. I have a family member who told me during Trump’s first presidency that I should “get out” and that I was no longer welcome in the country, simply for the crime of no longer being the good little brainwashed conservative I was raised to be. (I’d have loved to get out, but that takes money or education and I was raised with neither because conservatives like their children stupid and I’m trying but fuck it’s difficult to gain an education as a single adult in this economy)

They don’t want anyone here who doesn’t shut up and fall in line and you’d better be a heterosexual white nationalist Christian while you’re at it or you’re going to be fucked sooner or later.

I’m a first responder. I occasionally have to go through the pockets and belongings of unresponsive or dead people to search for ID or medical information. Obviously I’m not doing it to steal anything, but it has occurred to me that I have one of the few jobs where I actually “loot” corpses.

MUGGERS

Point well made, I agree.

I think sometimes there’s a sort of dark humor for some in exaggerating to the worst scenario in memes, knowing that it’s exaggerated, but then other people find it tiresome or too much. I don’t know, I don’t make memes, I just steal them.

I laugh at these memes because dark humor is my only way of coping.

It seems like there’s nothing else I can do. I don’t just care because it might negatively impact my life. Every time I look at the news (and for sure this is not just under Trump’s America, it’s been going on forever) more people are dying across the world in stupid wars because of stupid childish adults in power. And now our Antichrist President is stoking things up even more and even more people will die and it’s only to fuel his ego and his rich friends’ interests.

I vote, I speak up, I try to do my part and be the change and all, but what more am I going to do? I could stand in the middle of the street in front of the capital and scream how wrong this is but I’ll just get written up as another ignorant millennial lunatic and in the meantime I’ve been working sustained 50-80 hour weeks with no improvement in sight and can still barely afford to eat. Can’t change the government alone, especially not when there’s rent to pay and I’m bloody exhausted.